When I was 12 and I thought watching an episode of Full House on Nick at Nite was a huge must, I would happily tell myself, “Sleep is for the weak.” Soon I turned into a night owl with my nights lasting till 2 a.m. Sure, high school mornings were a pain but I survived. The thing was, I didn’t realize it could actually get harder, but of course it did.
It was with the help of our trusty education system that makes ramen a primary source of food and coffee a best friend – college. And honestly, I didn’t think my late sleeping schedule could really interrupt my school life all that much. I had fewer classes and this time on a schedule that didn’t start at seven in the freaking morning. Life sounded pretty good so changing my sleeping habits was the last thing on my mind. But then my poor gullible freshman mind realized the consequences…eventually.
It honestly took me until I was sick out of my mind from waking up early in the morning to go to work and immediately going to class right afterwards to realize I needed to change something. Between the moments I miraculously had a gap between early morning shifts and class, I would take five-minute naps like the sleep deprived person I was.
I thought naps would cut it but they weren’t doing much for me, not if I was forcing my body to juggle work and class like a bee workaholic on only 5-6 hours of sleep (sometimes four—those were the really bad days). According to the Mayo Clinic, taking naps after 3 p.m. can mess with nighttime sleep and long naps aren’t really any better. Sleep Medicine Specialist Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer told Cleveland Clinic sleeping for over an hour or more can increase the risk of falling into the deep stages of sleep which leads to “sleep inertia”. You know when you wake up from a nap and it feels like it’s been forever and you’re honestly not sure where you are or who you are? That’s pretty much sleep interia. So then you feel groggy and gross instead of energized, ruining the whole point of trying to feel good after a nap.
Personally, I didn’t really even have time for long naps (although when I did, I felt like a thousand years passed and I didn’t exist anymore) but nonetheless, I felt like death with even the tiny naps. I was just sleeping too late and waking up too early.
Fortunately, summer was right around the corner by the time I was probably an inch from the forever sleep. If school breaks didn’t exist, I probably would have been brain-dead by now. Thankfully, I’m alive. And smarter (sort of). Point is, I’m trying to be a lot more adultish now (at least, when it comes to sleep) and attempting to implement a healthy sleeping routine this time. I don’t want to accidentally wake up at 3 in the morning and panic because I think I’m late for work when really it’s just my brain on it’s last cell due to the lack of rest.
So I got a couple tips for you from Affordable Colleges Online who talked to experts that definitely know their sleep:
- Stick to a regular sleeping schedule
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…because our bodies need regularity to have them functioning at their best. To do that, I would recommend coordinating a time that gets you eight hours of sleep and if it seems hard, then gradually get yourself to sleep earlier and earlier until you feel pretty comfortable with the times. Alarms are lifesavers and they can put your sleeping schedule on track.
- Try only associating sleep to your bed
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…because it can be harder to sleep when your body’s so used to eating or studying there. It becomes a place where you do all these things when you’re awake that when you try to go to sleep, your body won’t just chill the crap down, it thinks you should be doing a million other things. I recommend avoiding doing too much on the bed, for example, instead of studying there, you can study at your desk.
- Try to fight yourself from having a caffeinated drink in the afternoon.
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Caffeine can affect sleep from up to 8 hours and even if you do fall asleep, it’s not as deep as it would without the stimulant. Makes sense why I felt so sick for almost the whole day once after regrettably drinking caffeine late at night before a huge exam. But hey I passed!
There’s of course many other things you can do to get into a healthier sleeping routine and I really do recommend trying to at least sort of get into the habit. I know how especially hard it can be in college but after my freshman year, feeling like death doesn’t sound like much of an option anymore. We can’t forget to take care of ourselves and since we already started this hectic crazy journey into college, we might as well finish it—well-rested (at least sort of).